After winning Israel’s general elections on his plan to set Israel’s final borders unilaterally, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will start to form a coalition, Reuters reported.
Olmert’s centrist Kadima party, founded four months ago by coma-stricken Ariel Sharon, won the elections but by less than expected.
Official results showed that Kadima won 28 seats in the 120-member parliament, centre-left Labor with 20, the ultra-Orthodox Shas with 13, ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu with 12 and right-wing Likud with 11.
Israel Radio said Olmert would name teams on Wednesday to start negotiations with other parties on forming a coalition.
Correspondents say Olmert’s margin of victory is much less than he had hoped for, and that he could have trouble forming a stable coalition.
Olmert told his party after his victory that he is determined to set Israel’s permanent borders by 2010 by dismantling West Bank settlements while expanding bigger blocs there.
"In the coming period we will move to set the final borders of the state of Israel, a Jewish state with a Jewish majority," Olmert said.
"We will try to achieve this in an agreement with the Palestinians. This is our hope and prayer,” he said, but he added that if the Palestinians did not move toward peace "Israel will take its destiny in hand" and define its borders after consulting the United States.
More than 240,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank, territory Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
The World Court has ruled all settlements in the occupied territory illegal.
Palestinians say that unilateral moves would never bring peace and would deny them a viable state. Some Arab political analysts say that Israel didn’t want a peace partner from the beginning, and that it used Hamas’ election victory as an excuse for acting on its own.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli election would make no difference unless Olmert abandoned unilateralism and returned to the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan.
"This result will not change (anything) as long as the agenda of Olmert himself does not change and he does not abandon the question of unilateral agreements," Abbas said in Khartoum where he is attending the Arab League summit.
Israelis voted on the day the Palestinian parliament approved a Hamas-led government.
"While the election is being held in the Israeli entity, the flags of the Hamas government are being raised," Hamas' Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniyeh told a rally in Gaza.
Israel, the United States and the European Union refused to deal with Hamas, which they classify as a “terrorist” group, unless it recognizes Israel’s right to exist, give up anti-Israeli attacks and accept interim peace agreements, demands strongly rejected by Hamas.